How dietary carbohydrates cause weight gain

Part 3: Control hormones

The hormones that control our bodies' responses to internal and external events were conditioned by our environment over the past couple of million years. These set in motion different combinations of hormonal responses. We have several hormones that raise levels of glucose in our bloodstream:

• adrenaline (epinephrine),
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• glucagon,
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• glucocorticoids (cortisol, cortisone, corticosterone)
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• and growth hormone.

But we have only one hormone - insulin - to bring glucose levels down.

This strongly suggests that high glucose levels were not a problem in earlier times, meaning that we must have eaten a low-carb, high-fat diet in pre-historic times.

Normalisation of controls

Our bodies have a control system that works extremely efficiently, without any conscious effort on our part, as long as it is allowed to. Appetite and hunger are natural and vital signals which are part of this system - and both must be satisfied. Therefore, any diet should follow a pattern that is normal and natural.

Modern low-calorie diets, whether they are obviously faddy - relying on a very restricted range of nutrient-poor foods such as raw vegetables, or cabbage soup - or requiring a more subtle reduction of calorific intake, are abnormal and unnatural. They all encourage hunger but do not satisfy it. Neither, usually, do they satisfy the appetite.

Insulin is the main storage hormone in the body. In the presence of large amounts of insulin, produced by eating carbohydrates - typically simple sugars and starches - the body is primed to store energy as fat. The production of insulin inhibits hormone sensitive lipase, a fat-burning enzyme, thereby preventing your body's fat cells releasing their fat. This effectively stops your body from burning your stored fat and makes it well nigh impossible for you to lose the weight you have put on. When insulin levels are lower, as is common on a low-carb, higher-fat diet, your body is less able to store energy in your fat stores, and more likely to burn that fat. This action of insulin may account for the apparent contradiction between the paradoxical dietary effects of fat and carbohydrate on human weight, because insulin's job is to get energy out of the bloodstream, not let more in.

The most important prerequisite of any diet, then, is to get your body's systems working normally again - and, crucially, reducing the production of insulin. That means cutting carbs and increasing fats.